


The Trial of Skywalker

by theLoyalRoyalGuard



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Asexual Rey (Star Wars), Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Ben Solo has to work hard for that redemption, Canon-Typical Violence, Established Poe Dameron/Finn, Force-Sensitive Finn (Star Wars), Hurt/Comfort, Multi, POV Ben Solo, POV Finn (Star Wars), POV Poe Dameron, POV Rey, Platonic Soulmates, Polyamory, Redeemed Ben Solo, Rey Needs A Hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:22:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22220239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theLoyalRoyalGuard/pseuds/theLoyalRoyalGuard
Summary: Kylo Ren is dead, but Ben Solo survives the battle on Exegol. If facing the Emperor was hard, it's nothing compared to facing himself. It means confronting his own monstrosity, and the people whose lives he destroyed. It means letting them confront him, and decide his fate, so he can either die, or begin the life-long work of using his power to heal the galaxy he almost ruled.Now a new life begins for him and Rey. While her chosen family rebuilds the Republic, they walk this path together, balancing on the knife's edge between the Light and the Dark.(On hiatus)
Relationships: Finn & Ben Solo, Finn & Rey (Star Wars), Finn/Rose Tico, Poe Dameron & Ben Solo, Poe Dameron & Finn & Rey, Poe Dameron & Rey, Poe Dameron/Finn, Rey & Ben Solo
Comments: 9
Kudos: 38





	1. We Go Together

**Author's Note:**

> I just had to fix the end of Rise of Skywalker. Ben deserves that redemption, but he has to earn it, too. Tags will be added as the story progresses.

“Oh no you don’t.” Rey caught him as he fell. Kylo – no, Ben. His name was Ben – sagged in her arms, the smile still lingering on his face. “Ben…”

She held him, held all his strength, the power they had shared. The power they would continue to share, as she held him together by force of will. By the Force of her will. “You won’t get out of this so easy.”

She helped him to his feet. He leaned on her, his weight on her shoulders until he could bear it himself. He did not complain, but walked silently, slowly, beside her. It felt so right, at last, to have him at her side. With her, not against her. With her, not trying to draw her in. So simple and so right it was the only thing she could process, as they walked out of the darkness and into the terrible blue light of Exegol.

~~~

_Two figures rise from the shattered shards of shadow, walk together out of the ruined darkness of the throne room. Two silhouettes leave it all behind, blue light beaming around them._

_Destroyers plummet like dying stars, the fall of the Empire, the end of the First Order. It’s gone, all gone. Palpatine, who should have died long ago, is gone._

_They are free._

~~~

The _Falcon_ came to pick her up from the blasted surface of Exegol. Rey hailed them from _Red Five,_ and they waited. Ben stood in the shadow of the ship, battered and bruised, looking rather as though he would have liked to disappear. He said nothing, but stood with his head down, hands limp at his sides. The wind blew the dark fringe of his hair over his eyes. Neither spoke; there was nothing to be said. Words, after what they’d done, felt hollow.

She looked up as the ship, his father’s ship, her ship, swept down to land a safe distance away. Even so, the impact nearly knocked her down. A hand gripped her elbow, steadying her. She hadn’t even heard him move. He didn’t look at the Falcon, only at her, until a familiar, beloved voice called out her name.

“Rey!” Finn ran towards them, leaping from the end of the gangway before it even touched the ground. “Rey!” 

But as she turned from Ben towards Finn, he skidded to a halt, a blaster in his hand, and screamed in a voice white hot with rage, “Get away from her!”

“Go,” Ben said, though his bleak eyes seemed to beg her to stay, as they had since the battle in Snoke’s throne room. A memory that paled in comparison to Palpatine’s, a mere game, a trial run, for the real test.

She pulled away from Ben, her body between him and Finn’s blaster, as she approached him, walking, then breaking into a run. She flung her arms around his neck, holding him tight. He gripped her reflexively.

“Poe?” she asked, almost too afraid to ask. Afraid of the answer after the devastation she had seen in the sky. 

“He’s fine, he’s okay.” Finn’s voice was husky now, raw with feeling. “What is he doing here?”

“He’s coming with us,” Rey said, stepping back to look him in the eye, though she didn’t let him go. The warm solidity of his body, the certainty that he and Poe were alive, filled her aching body with hope and relief.

“You’re joking.”

She looked back, followed Finn’s gaze to Ben. He stood where she’d left him, back straight, black sweater hanging limp and torn from his shoulders. He had been everything she hated, because he had everything she wanted. Power. Family. Purpose.

Now he had nothing. 

And she had it all. 

He could have boarded _Red Five_ while she greeted Finn, he could have fled. To hide or fight again, to do whatever he wanted out in the Galaxy, but he hadn’t. He just stood there, waiting. For what? 

“He’s the reason I’m alive right now, he’s the reason we’re all alive. He’s coming with us.”

~~~

The journey back to Ajan Kloss was the strangest of Finn’s life, and his life had been really weird the last few years. But nothing beat locking Kylo Ren in a cabin on the _Falcon,_ knowing perfectly well no door could hold him. The battle left him jumpy and strung out on adrenaline, that didn’t let up when Ren could come up behind him at any second. 

He wanted to be home. He wanted to see Poe.

He wanted to make the shadows leave Rey’s face. Only her insistence that Ren wouldn’t try to kill them all – and the knowledge that she could stop him if he did – gave him any amount of peace. Jannah stayed away from all of them, though the fury in her expression said everything she didn’t. 

Rey sat slumped in her seat, turning a lightsaber slowly in her hands, her gaze so far away she might be looking into another galaxy entirely. He reached out and brushed the filthy hair away from her cheek, and she blinked, finally focusing. 

“What happened back there?” he asked gently. “I felt…” he shook his head. He didn’t know how to explain what he’d felt, and the secret he’d never managed to tell her weighed on him. 

“It was… I’d rather… I’m sorry, I’d rather only have to explain it once. Can I tell you when we get back?”

“Yeah, yeah of course. I get it.” And he did, even if it disappointed him. “What about Kylo Ren? He’s not some porg you can just bring home for a pet.”

One corner of her mouth twitched. At least he’d almost succeeded in making her smile, but she just said firmly, “He’s Ben now, and he deserves a chance to answer for what he’s done. To do better.” Before he could argue, she finished, “It’s what Leia would want.”

“No one’s going to trust him,” Finn said, his heart hammering again. “Ever. And after what he’s done, he doesn’t deserve it!”

She sat up, sudden ferocious again. On Exegol, she’d looked like a ghost. Now she looked… dangerous.

“Everyone deserves a second chance, Finn. You should know that better than anyone. You and Jannah and every spy and every defector that’s ever joined the ranks of the Resistance. He might fail, but he deserves to be allowed to try.”

He blinked, taken fully aback. “Why are you defending him?”

“Because someone has to!” Her voice rang with the unspoken truth. Everyone else who might have defended Kylo Ren – Ben Solo, whoever he was now – was dead. 

But instead of that, she said more quietly, “And I believe in the good in him, because he believed in the good in me.”

He didn’t understand that at all. “I’m sorry. I’ll believe he’s good when I see it.” And he did not believe he would ever see it. He knew what Kylo Ren was, he’d spent his whole life knowing what Kylo Ren was. Finn hadn’t had a choice, he’d grown up in the First Order, brainwashed by their messages played to him even in his sleep. Ren had chosen. He had come from a family that loved him, that he remembered, and he had chosen to become a monster. It was Finn who argued against the careless killing of stormtroopers, Finn who had been behind the white helmet and could see behind the helmets of others, Finn who grieved a little more every time he was forced to choose between the life of a stormtrooper, and the life of a resistance fighter.

Rey wanted him to extend that mercy, that understanding, to Kylo Ren. To the man who’d been instrumental in creating stormtroopers, in taking children from their parents by force.

He couldn’t do it. He didn’t trust a man like that well enough to think he would ever be able to do it.

Rey looked at him for a long time. It wasn’t the first time he’d gotten the sense she could read his thoughts, though he’d never had the nerve to ask. Sometimes, he looked at her and thought he could read hers, too, as if she was speaking to him even when she wasn’t looking at him, or wasn’t even there. This was not one of those times. He had no idea what was going on in her head now.

“You’ll see it,” she said at last.

“If Poe doesn’t kill him, first,” Finn muttered, and when she didn’t answer, he went to see Jannah. Only once he’d left the room did he realize, he still hadn’t said what he needed to say. 

~~~

_He’s on his father’s ship, surrounded by the feel of him, the memory of him. He can remember perfectly what Han’s death felt like, as if death is a cloying taste in his mouth. Now Han is gone, just gone. There’s nothing left nothing left nothing…_

_His eyes sting. His body shakes and shakes. It hurts like every bone was shattered in that fall, but it was shattered long before. Something deeper, something more…_

_He can’t cry. He doesn’t know how._

_He wants to scream. He wants to tear apart the ship that holds his father’s memory. His hands shake, even in fists. All he wants is to lash out, to tear, break, shatter everything around him to match what’s inside him._

_But no. No. He’s not that anymore. He doesn’t know who he is anymore. He hasn’t been this in a long, long time._

_He sits perfectly still, so still his stillness is movement. He shakes and shakes._

_She’s watching him. She’s there. He knows she’s there, but this time, he doesn’t look up._


	2. Approaching the Resistance

After three hours of arguing, Rey simply turned around and walked out of the Resistance council room. The generals and leaders agreed on most things, if only in premise and not all the details, but no one could decide what to do with Ben Solo. Most of them wanted to kill him. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand why; Rey had frequently wanted to kill him, too. She had hated him, feared him, but only before she’d known him. Before he’d known her.

Now they didn’t know him, and they all wanted him dead. The argument came from two factions: those who wanted a trial before the execution, and those fewer who, in honor of General Organa, didn’t think they should kill him at all – though none of them seemed to know what to do with a dangerous and incredibly powerful Force user instead.

What neither Rey, nor anyone else, had bothered to point out was that killing Kylo Ren, presuming his evil and general intention not to die, would be extremely difficult. 

What none of them seemed to understand was that Kylo Ren, as difficult as he’d been to kill, was already dead.

D-O scooted after her as she strode away, grey robe fluttering around her with her speed. 

“M-mad,” the little droid chattered, zipping ahead and then dropping back beside her.

“Yeah, they’re pretty mad.” She sighed heavily. “I know why, but there are some things I can’t fix.”

“You fix me. No more squeaky wheel.”

She couldn’t help smiling. She liked droids, and D-O especially needed someone to like them, after so many years alone. She and D-O had, in a sense, been abandoned by the same person.

“Why don’t you go hang out with BB-8, D-O?”

“No no,” the little droid insisted. “Follow you.”

Which they did, bouncing over the jungle path, as Rey brushed enormous leaves aside from her path. She knew Poe was following her, too, long before she heard his footsteps behind her. His frustration rippled out to her, sharp and prickly as the scrub plants of Jakku. The only times he wasn’t sharp and prickly these days was when Finn was around, his boyfriend one of the few sources of comfort he seemed willing to allow himself. Without Leia, he carried a great part of the weight of the Resistance on his shoulders now. He and Finn and a handful of others, even with the First Order falling to pieces and leaderless, had a massive amount of work to do.

She didn’t envy them. 

Rey stopped on the path, waiting for him to catch up. D-O rocked backward and forward next to her, mumbling, “uh oh uh oh, no no thank you.”

“You’re going to see him, aren’t you.” Poe reached her, arms crossed over his chest, dark eyes flashing. “You should be back there.”

“Why? So they can keep ignoring me? They should all stay well out of it. Ben is my concern.”

“All the more reason for you to be involved in the decision, then,” Poe snapped.

“I said my piece. None of them want to hear it.”

“That doesn’t mean you can just walk out. You– I need you in there.” The edge in his voice, she realized, was desperation.

“Why?” She forced her own voice to soften. “I don’t even agree with you.” Poe was in the camp that wanted to be rid of Ben immediately, without the risk and delay of a trial.

The tension in his shoulders sagged slightly. The last year had aged him, since the Battle of Crait, as much as his new authority suited him. They were all tired – Rey didn’t remember what it was like not to be tired, could hardly remember the relative simplicity of her old life – but his job and her job had now diverged. Hers was with Ben, and the Force.

His was, well… everything else.

“I know,” he said, a bit more quietly, though with no less intensity. “I think you’re wrong, but I’d rather you were in there disagreeing with me–”

“Than with Ben? If you can’t trust him, won’t you at least trust me? You trusted Hux, of all people.”

He brushed that aside with a jerk of his hand. “I didn’t trust Hux to do anything but what served him best. Hux was small and petty and selfish until the end. And of course I trust you. But Rey… Ren–”

“Solo.”

“Fine. But Solo _isn’t_ just your concern. Let’s say you’re right about him. Let’s say he’s a good guy now, and not just serving himself like Hux–”

The comparison made her head jerk back, a flare of fury racing through her. She got so angry now, and sometimes she didn’t know if it was Ben’s rage, or her own. But Poe reached out and grabbed her hand, the warmth of his rough palm grounding her with its pressure, and she didn’t interrupt. 

“Hear me out. Even if he’s good now, really good,” and they both knew, even as he said it, that he no more believed that than Finn or anyone else in the council did, “then he’s still done horrible things.”

Now she did break in, gripping his hand so hard it must have hurt, though he didn’t flinch. “They want to kill him. Murder him. That’s why I left. I couldn’t listen to them all talking the same way as the people we’re supposed to be better than.”

“But what about the people _he_ murdered?” Poe asked, and there was something she didn’t like in his eyes, in the tangled emotions roiling inside him. 

“That doesn’t give us the right to execute him without trial. Is that really the foundation you want to build a new Republic on? Come on, I know you better than that.” She hoped so, anyway. Certainly, she thought better of him than that. He did what needed to be done in a fight, and unlike Finn, she didn’t think Poe spent a lot of time feeling bad about it, but they weren’t talking about facing Ben across a battlefield here.

Though she couldn’t help but wonder what Ben would do if they did decide to kill him. 

Secretly, she wasn’t sure what she’d do, either. 

Jaw clenched, Poe yanked a leaf from the nearest plant and started tearing it into tiny pieces, flecks of green showering down onto D-O. The little droid squeaked and rolled backwards out of the way. Rey waited for him to finish.

“So you’d accept putting him on trial,” Poe said slowly, dropping the last shreds of leaf. “It’s moral for you. Not about keeping him alive, but about how he dies?”

“You know it’s not.” She resented him phrasing it that way, framing her that way. “But I would accept him going on trial. In fact, I think he should, along with the First Order officers when we catch them. It just has to be fair. I think there are better ways for Ben to repay what he did than just… dying. Dying isn’t enough. It doesn’t make anyone else better, not even him.”

That was what she’d thought, what she’d known in her bones on Exegol. When she’d opened her eyes with his arms around her, his life pouring into her. She lived because he had been willing to die for her, but even that wasn’t enough. Not for her. Not for him. Dying was the easy way out, and it was a waste of everything else he could be and do with his life. 

So she’d held him, too. Kept him alive. 

“Fine.” Poe folded his arms protectively tight over his chest. “I’ll throw my weight in for giving him a trial, if you’ll come back to the council.”

“I’ll come back after I’ve talked to him. I won’t take long.” 

She turned to go, but Poe said, “Wait. I don’t get it. Why do you trust him? Why do you care so much? You ran from him, and you fought him, just as much as any of us. More! I appreciate the moral standpoint, but that doesn’t mean you have to keep him company. And don’t give me that garbage you gave Finn about him saving your life. Just because I worked with Hux for five minutes doesn’t mean I’d have stuck my neck out for him afterwards.”

Rey snorted, trying to picture Poe and Hux doing anything together. “No, your egos would clash too badly.” She gave him a light punch on the arm before he could take her too seriously and get offended. 

“You’re not answering my question,” he said, rather pointedly. 

“Fine. It’s because I don’t know how to give you an answer you’ll understand.”

“Try me.”

“I need him. I understand him. I have for a long time, it’s part of why he frightened me so much. I…” She trailed off, remembering a red throne room, a black-gloved hand outstretched. Remembering a dark pit on a lonely island. Remembering the burn of rage and pain and fear inside her, and inside him. 

Rey shook her head. “I can’t explain.” Which wasn’t exactly true. More true would have been to say she was afraid of what Poe would think of her if she did explain. What they’d all think. Because she needed them, too. Him and Finn and Rose. They were her family now, they were all the family she had left. “You’d better be getting back. General.”

~~~

It was night before Poe finally got out of the council. After tabling the discussion of Kylo Ren, there was no shortage of other business for them to cover, and he was exhausted and more irritated than ever when he left. Rey had come back, as promised, but left again not long after. They all felt the absence of General Organa in the council, a place none of them could fill. Things had been so much easier when she was alive. When she was here.

Finn was with Rose tonight, and even though Poe ached for his company, he didn’t want to interrupt. The three of them had an arrangement, and he wasn’t about to throw things off just because he was feeling temperamental. 

Unfortunately, that left him at loose ends. Too wired to sleep, too tired to accomplish anything productive. He should find Rey. He’d been meaning to ask her if she wanted to have one of the teams they’d left on Exegol bring _Red Five_ back.

Rey was probably with Kylo Ren. Again. The thought soured his stomach. It scared him that she spent so much time and energy on Ren, that Ren seemed to have so much influence on her. And being scared pissed him off something fierce.

For the second time that day, he stalked down the jungle path.

Ren’s cell was separate from both their handful of other First Order prisoners, and far from the main camp. A durasteel box reinforced with energy barriers, powered by a remote generator. It wasn’t failsafe, but then, what was, against him? Having him anywhere nearby felt like a constant threat, a pulse of danger that never let up. 

Rey had a point about the morality of keeping him alive, but it was a hell of a risk that Poe didn’t think they could afford to take.

But Rey wasn’t there. Poe approached the cell with one hand on the blaster at his hip, though the last time he’d tried to shoot Kylo Ren hadn’t gone so hot. Still, it made him feel a tiny bit better.

The cell was completely empty, except for a thin mattress on the floor and Kylo Ren himself, looking disarmingly young in nothing but the torn black clothes he’d been in when he got off the _Falcon_ two days before. He was sitting cross-legged on the mattress, looking up, clearly waiting for Poe.

“I remember you,” Ren said, his voice so normal it made Poe’s skin crawl. Hatred boiled in every nerve in his body. 

“Yeah? Good.” Poe spat on the dead leaves that carpeted the ground. “Not so big and scary without your mask, huh?”

“And yet,” Ren said, in that bizarrely human voice without the distortion of his helmet, “you’re afraid.”

“Yeah, well, you haven’t fooled everyone with this innocent act of yours. I know exactly what you are, Kylo Ren. I’ve been fighting your kind since I was a kid, and my parents before me. It’s kind of a family legacy, you know?” He took a step forward, anger overcoming his fear. “You know about family legacies?”

Another step forward, until he’d nearly reached the zipping blue veins of energy that kept the monster caged. He hated Ren with the same blazing force that he’d loved and respected Leia. That there was any relation between them only felt like salt in an open wound. A vast, cosmic insult to the General’s memory.

Ren didn’t crack. He didn’t so much as blink or clench a fist. But his eyes were flat black, as dead as a shark’s.

“Yes,” he said quietly, as if they were having a perfectly normal and reasonable conversation. “I do. And I know exactly who and what you are, Poe Dameron. I know about you, and your friends, and the people you love.”

“Is that a threat?” Poe’s heart began to race faster, hammering in his ears.

“I thought we were just comparing knowledge. Coming to a mutual understanding.”

Poe scoffed. “Then understand this. You might have Rey convinced, you might think you’re powerful enough to get away with the crimes you’ve committed, but you’re not. And I swear, I will make sure she sees you for what you really are. I will do whatever it takes. She’s my friend, and I love her more than I’ve ever been afraid of a rat like you, so I won’t let you use her. Got it?”

The corner of Ren’s mouth twitched, like the edge of a sneer. This wouldn’t be so difficult, after all. Poe just had to provoke him into losing control, let Rey see he hadn’t changed like she thought.

And provoking Kylo Ren had never been particularly difficult. 

It would hurt Rey, and he was sorry for that, but it would be so much worse worse if she went on believing Ren was doing anything but serving himself.


	3. Peace and Purpose

Rose found her sitting on the jutting edge of great rock, watching the sun rise. Rey turned to watch her as Rose dropped down beside her and swung her legs over the edge. The red dawn shone in her dark hair and glowed on the curve of her cheekbone. When Rose reached out and put her hand over Rey’s on the rock, Rey smiled at her.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey yourself.” Rose smiled back, heels tapping the rock. “Mind me joining you?”

Rey shook her head. 

“Haven’t seen you much lately, since… all that.” Rose gestured towards the sky, as if to take in the whole Galaxy, but Rey knew what she was pointing to. Out there, Exegol hulked on the edges of her mind, a dark weight pulling at her, even from here. “Everyone talks about you, you know? But nobody asks how you’re feeling. So. How are you holding up?”

“Great question. I’ll tell you when I have an answer.”

Rose laughed, but shook her head. “I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

“It’s been a lot,” Rose said gently.

“Yes. And it’s not over.” Rey looked back up at the sun, breaking now above the trees of Ajan Kloss, turning everything from red to gold and green. She’d watched the sunrise from this spot so often now she could time it in her head, how long it took the sky to go from darkness to light. By the count of that same routine, she should be going to train with Leia in a few minutes, and the loss hit her all over again in a rush of grief.

Rose squeezed her hand, and Rey squeezed back reflexively. “Thinking about General Organa?” she asked, pulling Rey’s attention back to her.

“How’d you know?” 

“Well, it’s sort of obvious. You, coming up here every day… I’m not so busy I don’t notice. I didn’t know her really well, not like you did, but I miss her. So I thought, you must be, too.”

“I never got to say good-bye,” Rey said quietly. “Not really. I felt her… There was this moment, out there, I almost… lost myself. I was scared and angry, and I…” She shook her head, could hardly put it into words. The moment she’d seen Ben falter, the weakness in his eyes, the hesitation. And how she’d struck, without thought, with all the fury she’d pent up for years towards him. But that wasn’t what bothered her. It was how good it had felt, how satisfying, for just one instant.

Leia had reached her, just a touch, a warmth, a reminder. Not of who she was, because Rey knew enough now to understand that she was both, that she could feel both the Light and the Dark. Leia had simply reminded her of which one she _wanted_ to be. Simply by loving her, from so far away. 

“And she was there,” she finished softly. “Just there, when I needed her. You don’t know what that means to me, to have… someone like her, there for me.”

“Someone like…” Rose lowered her voice, as if telling a secret, or something she wasn’t certain she ought to say aloud, “a mom?”

Rey’s throat tightened. Her mouth trembled, so she nodded instead of trying to speak right away. 

Rose sniffed, and the hand not holding Rey’s went up to her chest, to the crescent necklace she always wore. “I get it.”

“I don’t want it to ever happen again.” When Rey found her voice, it came out hard and brittle. “I’m never going to let someone go again.” They always left without a chance to say good-bye. Her parents. Luke. Leia.

She’d only been able to save one person, out of so many. But she’d done it, just like she’d promised.

“Did you… with Paige… Never mind.” She winced, realizing too late how insensitive a question that was. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay.” Now it was Rose who looked out into the dawn, still holding the crescent pendant. “Yeah. We’d always say it before she went out on a run. It was sort of a ritual with us. That’s kind of sad, isn’t it?”

“It was smart,” Rey said. Maybe she should start doing it, but she’d rather not have to at all. Not just no good-byes, but no losses, too. Not Rose, not Finn, not Poe.

Not even Ben.

“Do you do it with Finn now, too?” she asked, even though it made her feel a little nosey to ask anything about their relationship. It had just sort of happened between them, like it had between Finn and Poe. They’d worked it out, and Rey didn’t ask too many questions. Besides, it made Finn so obviously happy to be with them, it so plainly filled that need for community, for family, that she understood so well. She envied him a little, how easily he fit into a larger whole.

Beside her on the rock, Rose nodded, and the chill of her fear made a little ripple between them. The fear that one day she would say it to Finn for the last time, like she had her sister.

Now it was Rey’s turn to squeeze her hand. “I want it to be over, too.”

Rose nodded, and for a long time they simply sat. Rey hadn’t yet gotten over how strange and good it felt to have someone to sit next to, someone to just _be_ with. No more lonely meals, no more little white marks on a wall. In their place, a combination of warm friendship and the cold knowledge that the people she’d waited so long for really weren’t coming back.

But she wasn’t no one. She wouldn’t be.

“Aren’t you going to ask about him?” She sat straighter on the edge of the rock. The sun was fully risen now, a great gold medallion burnishing the sky. “Everyone else does.”

“Who?” Rose looked back at her.

“Ben. I’ve been waiting for you to tell me how wrong I am to trust him.” Might as well get it out of the way, and Rose hadn’t so much as mentioned him since they’d returned from Exegol.

“No. Why should I? I know everyone else is giving you grief over it. I won’t say I understand.” Something hardened in Rose’s sweet face, pain and loss and anger that made her look older. “But I know you. The more we push you, the harder you’ll dig in your heels. I don’t need to go around repeating what Poe and Finn have probably already said.”

“So you agree with them.” Of course she did. Rey did not expect to find any allies in this. Not among the living. “But you’re not going to tell me.”

“Nope. If you think we’re safe with him here, well… I choose to believe you. That’s what’s important. I trust you, even if I can never trust him.” 

A weight lifted from Rey’s heart. It wasn’t all she wanted, but it was something. Better than how alienated she was beginning to feel from Finn and Poe. “Thank you. That… means a lot to me. Poe’s angry at me. Again. And I think Finn is, too. I don’t want to lose them. I don’t want to have to choose.”

Rose sighed and, for the first time, avoided Rey’s gaze, looking down instead at their hands overlaid on the rough brown stone.

“I can’t help you with that. You just have to try to understand why, how much he hurt them. He stands for everything they--”

“I know,” Rey said. “I do understand. I just don’t agree.”

“See, this is why I wasn’t going to mention him at all.” Rose managed a wry smile. 

Rey nodded, and let it drop, forced by the silence to consider that maybe she didn’t truly understand them, after all.

~~~

“Ben.”

It still surprised him to hear his name, that name. It was what she always called him, how she always greeted hm, as if to remind him who he was. Except for Dameron, she was the only person who had come to speak to him since they’d arrived on the forest moon. Rage still prickled under his skin when he thought of Dameron, who he should have killed when he had the chance…

He kept his eyes closed, took a long, steadying breath, pushing those thoughts down. 

For so long, the voices in his head had urged him on, for so long he scarcely knew if they were his own, or someone else’s. Snoke. Palpatine.

“Ben?”

He opened his eyes. Rey stood on the other side of the energy barrier, morning light gilding her hair and the silver hilt of the lightsaber at her hip. 

“What did you do to your hand?” The gentleness in her greeting sharpened now into an edge, and he glanced at the bruised, bloody knuckles of his right hand as if he hadn’t noticed them before. 

“Nothing. An accident.” He pushed himself to his feet and came to stand facing her, only those blue lines of light separating them. How strange, how wonderful, to be so close to her. After so long speaking to her with lightyears between them, now there were only inches. In her presence, he felt a serenity and purpose that he’d never found anywhere else. His life was a storm, and she was its eye.

She gave him a look that said as clear as words she knew he was lying, and knew from his lie that the injuries were self-inflicted. An expression of his fury. There was no blood on the wall where he’d struck it, but maybe she knew that, too. The way he knew that she was worried, resigned, afraid of something just outside his sight, but if he looked closer, he might be able to uncover that, too…

“What have they decided?” His own calm surprised him. 

“Well, a lot of them want to kill you.” Her voice held all the false lightness that explained her fear and anger. He merely nodded. 

“Of course they do.”

She gave him an odd, sharp look. “But I’ve convinced them to put you on trial first.”

Every muscle tensed, and his hands curled into fists that made his bruised knuckles throb. He used to crave the pain; now it made him feel slightly ill. Or maybe that was the thought of a public trial, of being seen with no mask, of all his failures thrown in his face.

He had failed to be Vader. He had failed to better than Vader.

 _You will fail to find the Light, just as you failed to embrace the Dark_.

“What?” Rey stepped so close he thought she might burn herself on the barrier. He wished profoundly that it wasn’t there, that she could touch him. If she intended to touch him. “Would you prefer an execution? First Order style?”

He forced his hands to open. “No.”

“It’s going to be hard,” she said, “but that’s the point, isn’t it?”

“How did you do it?” he asked, looking down into her fierce, bright eyes. How she’d haunted him, these last few years. And continued to haunt him, there with him even after she left and before she returned. “I sense the Dark in you, always. I have seen it. Once, I was sure you would join me there. Yet, every time you were presented with a choice, you chose the Light. You _chose._ How?”

For so long, every time he’d chosen, it had been the Dark. The wrong choice. The terrible choice. Thinking it would bring him peace, and power, thinking it would help him build the legacy he thought he wanted, instead of the one demanded of him by the very family that had failed him. 

He’d had a father who loved him. A mother who loved him. An uncle who was supposed to love him. But his father and his mother had sent him away, and his uncle had betrayed him, so he’d chosen the voices in his head, the ones that had always been right. Sounded right. The voice that had been there for him when his family was not.

Now Rey was the voice in his head, and yet he didn’t understand how she had not, like him, been seduced by the Dark. 

As he had now been seduced by the Light.

“How did you choose to come help me on Exegol?” she countered him.

“It was right.” The answer felt incomplete, insufficient. It provided truth, but not understanding.

“That’s how. Every time. At least, I think so. I just knew what I didn’t want to be, so I did the things the person I wanted to be would do. Isn’t that what you did, when you--” she broke off, but he heard the words anyway. _When you killed your father._

He was afraid. Of her. Of all of them. And he hated it. All the fears that hunted him made him so angry, here cornered in a cage. He drew himself up.

“Who do you want to be, Ben?” Rey asked. “We’re not perfect paragons of good or evil. We never were, and we never will be.”

He wanted to be the man he saw reflected in her eyes. For that brief, glorious hour on Exegol, he’d felt it. Peace and purpose. He’d decided, chosen, to fight the Knights of Ren, to fight Palpatine, to die so that Rey could live. When the life came back into her eyes and she’d looked at him, when she kissed him, he’d been exactly who he wanted to be. 

So why didn’t he feel that, now? How had he failed, again? Every time he had what he wanted within his grasp, he came up short. His blood burned, his stomach knotted with shame and anger turned inwards.

But he lifted his head, squared his shoulders, and chose what he thought that man would choose.

“I will stand trial before the Resistance, and accept their judgement.”


End file.
